Russian Pres. Medvedev is looking to build "Silicon Valley" near Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100215/157884654.html <comment><USER2> I'm a Russian (well, Ukrainian, but who cares) expat. I'm not a "big name", but I did gain a lot of valuable experience in the thirteen years I've lived in the U.S. No amount of financial incentives would convince me to start a business in Russia, even if they hand me a pile of no strings attached cash in the airport.

You see, I _like_ being able to start a business, rent an office, pay bills, pass inspections (car, fire safety, whatever), file my taxes, get through the airport security, get a driver's license, go to a university, and send kids to school (if I had kids) without having to bribe a single soul. I _like_ knowing that nobody else around me has the opportunity to drive drunk without fear of repercussions because they can give a cop $50 and drive on.

I _like_ walking on the street, getting on a bus, and riding a subway without fear of being beaten or killed because someone doesn't like my ethnicity. Ok, so I'm a white male, but I also like that other people around me have the opportunity to do the same. I'm not even talking about being treated decently, I'm talking about basic safety. Black people in Russia are doomed to standing by tanning salons with a sign "I got my tan here" (yeah, this is real).

I'm not even talking about making any significant amount money. Heaven forbid you make money in Russia. Well, first of all, without having connections in the government, you can't. But even if you do establish such connections, good luck dealing with their IRS, the KGB that wants a piece of the pie (ok, so they renamed it, but it's all the same people), and the corrupt-beyond-belief court system.

I _like_ grabbing coffee with rich people who want to meet me purely because they're happy to give advice, who didn't start out their career in organized crime, and who don't need three body guards and an armored SUV just to get around.

Boy, does this article touch a nerve. I know a ton of smart, driven, capable Russians who _love_ their country and who want to change the world while living there. But they're all here, in the U.S., because back there they're doomed to a life of corruption they refuse to deal with. The idea of offering them financial incentive to go back is frankly insulting. They don't need financial incentive. They just need an opportunity to make an _honest_ living. The rest, they'll do on their own.

<comment><USER3> Well, as a Canadian living in Russia for the past 13 years I have the following to say about the US...

Seriously, the parent post is so full of old clichés, it's not even funny. I lived outside of Russia for the past 20 years and I've moved back half a year ago, and I'm not even located in Moscow now. I live in a large industrial city in Ural region.

Russia has changed a lot in past 10 years and 90% of what I see in my daily private and business life is not much different from what I'm accustomed to in the UK. Some things are positively better (for example communal services are great though I can judge by my apartment block only).

Let me say something about bribes and corruption. I never gave a single bribe in my life in Russia then or now, with a possible exception of a small fine to a traffic cop paid on the spot in cash (to save myself time going to a nearby bank).

I know there are people who pay bribes, but plenty of businesspeople don't. Those businesspeople who don't pay bribes CAN be successful and quite often are. And those who do quite often get caught together with corrupt officials. The key point is -- today corruption is much less than it was in the 90s and it's falling year by year.

The image of organised crime driving around with armed body guards in SUVs is total bullshit nowadays. Most of SUVs you see on the streets in my city is driven by beautiful blond girls with artificial sun tan on their way to a gym.

I am walking the streets at night (admittedly, not in the depressed areas) without fear of being mugged, since the last fight I saw in this city was when bouncers kicked some rich guy out of a club for being too drunk.

The key is to look at the dynamics. Russia is getting better, cleaner, wealthier. Lawlessness that happened in the 90s is quickly being replaced by the rule of law. It's not perfect, but the progress is amazing.

When author of the parent post implies that somebody (like me) cannot make an _honest_ living in Russia today, I take it quite personally. The irony is -- he is not Russian, he has not lived in Russia for years, his friends are emigrant Russians -- but he has a long list of clichés that earn upvotes on HN.

<comment><USER4> So did you live outside of Russia for last 20 years or inside Russia for last 13 years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surkov is one of those smart guys in Kremlin administration. But the plan to build a silicon valley in Moscow is just ridiculous. As well as other government plans on innovations. There are at least two reasons for that:

First and most important is that innovations exist not just because government wants it. At least until the government is the client (and I suppose that's not what they're going to be in this case). Innovations is a result of public and individuals needs, a competition of prices and efficiency (and other things). And it also takes a certain infrastructure for them to work. Russia lacks these things. Most people simply don't care about better quality of life or at least are not willing to do anything about it. Then there's no infrastructure: an example of that would be a broken national post system or absolutely no financial and banking culture (very limited usage of credit cards). I could name a lot of successful US startups that simply wouldn't work in Russia for those reasons.

Second is corruption, of course. I can imagine it's slightly simpler for IT business to stay out of it, but only until you're making a certain amount of money. A common saying in Russian business is "Sit quiet and try not to reflect the light".

The problem with all those plans of building something innovative is that government should not initiate them at all. If they ever wanted to make any difference, they would probably be trying to build a healthy environment for businesses. Business does not need any help. What it needs is to eliminate obstructions on its way.

</comment><comment><USER6> The issue is that business succeeds in America because, generally speaking, there are few barriers here and wonderful protections. In America, the idea that the government would simply take something you made is abhorrent. Even when things like eminent domain are called upon, there is compensation provided (and compensation that can be challenged in courts). So businesses and investors feel safe that what is their's is actually their's.

Likewise, there are few barriers. Censorship is near non-existant in America and that's important for a lot of technology companies. Likewise, there are few administrative hassles - especially compared to economies that thrive on bribes.

There just isn't enough safety and security and too much hassle and you can't just decide to build that. It takes time to change the culture around that. And you have to prove that it's a durable stability. Many countries try to lure in foreign businesses with tax credits and the promise of stability and once profits are seen and businesses created, that stability is yanked away and assets eroded. America just has a long history of defending property rights in a way that actions over the past decade speak differently of Russia.

And, with that in mind, money going into Russia will demand much more favorable terms (since there's more assumed risk). The more favorable the terms, the worse a deal it is for Russia and the more incentive there is to yank the deal later on. Remember, politicians have maybe 20 years or so. They want their results quick. They often don't care about creating stability and responsibility that will leave their country in an advantageous position while the current voters vote them out of office.

What Russia really needs is a commitment to the rule of law and the enforcement of that law whether it's in the government's interest (or anyone's interest) or not. That's what really attracts money and prosperity - when the rules are just and enforced fairly against all parties.

</comment><comment><USER7> There was an ISP in the first floor of my building in Moscow, and you got broadband delivered by ethernet run up the stairwells. There was a sign in the stairwell offering a reward for turning in whoever kept cutting the ethernet wires. The gang of thugs that lived in the stairwell, would - in between using the stairs as a urinal and conducting brutal robberies - slash these wires regularly.

The ISP couldn't really call the police, because freedom in Moscow is equivalent to avoiding the police, and they were a shoestring operation without enough for bribes. Not that the police would investigate even if you bribed them, they'd more like pick a few scapegoats and beat them up or torture them.

So my internet went out frequently. They fixed it as fast as they could. It wasn't bad internet considering.

I can't imagine running a business in that environment.

</comment><comment><USER8> Back when I was in university doing my undergrad (only 4 years ago), in the two years that I spent in that particular university - out of all the people that I talked to, only one of them was actively looking to start a company or do something. It was a Russian foreign exchange student in his 1st year. He had already started and succeeded in business back in Mother Russia and was using his hard earned cash to now get an undergrad as an international student.

The Russians are intelligent, smart, and resourceful - they have all the qualities needed for entrepreneurship and it will take very little effort on the part of the Russian government to create an environment to attract them.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yesterday, I came back from Russia. Though this wasn't my first time there. The first thing you notice there, is that there's plenty of illegal competition. In one of the biggest shopping centers in Moscow, there is a shop just a side of an authorized Apple reseller that tries to sell you an _iPhone_ (which is actually a chinese TVPhone).

Apart from this, I really do think that Russia needs its own Silicon Valley with VCs and Incubators from U.S. There are many talented people with innovative ideas and products.

Speaking of corruption level and unsafe environment, I don't think that India is better, but nevertheless they have their own SV with well-established VCs from the States.

<comment><USER7> India is perfectly safe. There is also a vibrant technology economy already in place in many cities - albeit service based. This is a very different circumstance than Russia.

<comment><USER9> Is this really true? I may be wrong, but from what I've heard - India is perfectly safe in a few cities.

Perhaps, I didn't get into any trouble in Russia(and I was not only in Moscow, but in small 200km away from Moscow cities) because I'm white and speak fluent Russian. Anyway, as the saying goes "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Once, everything was built from just an idea.

<comment><USER10> India's _cities_ are by and large safe (unless you are doing something really weird/ in the sleazy parts - every city has its dangerous parts just like every American city I know of). You do have the very occasional sensational attack on foreigners which grabs the headlins.

I have friends from the USA, Sweden etc who have been living here for years without getting into any trouble. The best way to decide such things is to talk to someone you know who has already lived here.

And we don't quite have our "Silicon Valley" yet, though Bangalore has many outsourcing companies and offshore development centres where large companies in the USA or Europe offload work no one there wants to do. But yes, (as rjurney points out) there are cities with very large populations of programmers, Bangalore being the prototypical example.

<comment><USER7> I lived both places. The average block in Moscow is like some shady alley in Old Delhi at night ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given Russia's somewhat shady rule of law I doubt the real Silicon Valley is worried.

<comment><USER12> In Soviet Russia, Valley builds you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Making a Silicon Valley by fiat is pretty tough, even in a country where coffeemug's perceptive comments about the rule of law do not apply. Japan has at least a dozen places which wish they were Silicon Valley. I used to work at one of them. It wasn't a failure -- it employs a few thousand people and you are statistically certain to have used something containing something made there -- but it also wasn't the "put our town on the international map" thing the mucky mucks were hoping for.

I think PG had an article about that a few years ago. Yep, here we go. <http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html> I translated that for internal circulation among my bosses. It got... mixed reactions.

<comment><USER14>
      It got... mixed reactions.

To an outsider, it does look like another case of American exceptionalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if other city-states during the Renaissance sat around plotting, "How can we have our own Florence?"

<comment><USER15> Well, there was that SNL skit about the Sodom city council plotting how to compete with the more successful Gomorrah. Sorry, can't find it on YouTube but here's a .RAM file:

<http://cip.law.ucla.edu/ramfiles/i_love_sodom.ram>

(Bill Murray develops a pitch for "I Love Sodom", a riff on "I Love New York", leading to a real-life lawsuit. SNL won.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was under the impression that "Silicon Valleys" aren't planned to happen, but that they just happen. It's a mixture of the people and tech happening. It's a vibe. It's a culture. It's people.

I moved to the Valley a couple years ago there are many developers here who are all enterprising, talented, entrepreneurial, and willing to try and fail. It is something that simply doesn't exist where I'm from (Reno) because most people there are more willing to simply work for whoever will hire them and spend the rest of the time doing whatever they want (usually watching TV or playing videogames).

Moral of the story: you can't really teach or wish for this kind of thing to happen. You have to build a community willing to innovate and try and fail.

Also, those who succeed must get fabulously rich and a lot of prestige and respect.

<comment><USER17> More or less, it wasn't planned. It did have early government input. Silicon Valley was started by Stanford alumni, who got a lot of money from the DoD. The first tenants were defense and aerospace companies, and this transitioned to semiconductors and computers. The Silicon Valley we now know has taken 70 years to get here.

Basically, almost every government wants to incubate its own startup culture. Because they now recognize how much influence they contribute to the country and internationally. But it will take decades to know if their ideas have taken root. There is no shortcut to these things and most politicians aren't so patient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> secret codename is "Kirpitch Walley", insider says.

</comment><comment><USER19> it should be IN Moscow...near Sherementyevo. Only way for this to succeed.

<comment><USER20> From what a Russian co-worker tells me, Moscow is the only really safe place for any foreigner to really be.

<comment><USER21> My brother-in-law says St. Petersburg is much safer than Moscow. (But even St. Petersburg isn't safe enough -- he's a Jew, and eventually had to flee because he was getting harassed very often. Basically, all of Russia is unsafe for anyone non-Russian-looking. And _especially_ non-whites.

<comment><USER5> I confirm, Saint-Petersburg is okay, I live here. I think Moscow is actually less safer, because it's bigger and it attracts a lot of different people from unstable Russian republics. It's also waaaay more expensive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Spot Suspicious VoIP Signals - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24855/?a=f <comment><USER2> From the article: "So while VoIP might be cheaper and easier than other forms of voice calling, it may also be less secure."

Such bullshit! There is zero data in there leading to that conclusion. The article is about using selective packet delays and reorders to steganographically hide data. This has absolutely nothing to do with the security of the VoIP call itself.</comment>


Show HN: Tailwind.run – An Online Playground for Tailwind CSS - <AUTHOR> https://tailwind.run <comment><USER2> While semantic styling has been around for quite a while in different shapes and forms, this is essentially the same as inlining all of your styles in a style attribute on every element, albeit just a bit shorter to write.

It's an interesting idea to entertain as a thought, and some utility classes certainly hold value in general, but I don't see how you would ever reasonably want to use this in a project. It has all the same drawbacks as writing inline styles on elements, not to mention the large size.

Say you have a number of views and decide (or a client decides) you want all of the buttons to have a bit more padding. If anything else happens to completely accidentally also use the same padding class you're always left with manually checking every single instance just for a small change like this.

<comment><USER3> The first thought everyone has when seeing it is what you described, including myself.

I suggest trying it out & reading more about it. It's the only way utility CSS frameworks like this seem to click.

In my opinion, Tailwind works best when being used to create template components. In your button case you would just modify your reusable button component or the reusable base button component if you have multiple button components.

You get the best of all worlds.

* You avoid writing a lot of CSS.

* You don't have to worry about thinking of CSS class names or name pollution

* I find it faster & easier to style components with a utility CSS framework in something like Storybook than it is with CSS.

* I recommend adding a plugin to your editor to help with the names of Tailwinds classes. VS Code has a couple that will suggest the right class name based on what you type.

<comment><USER2> You get all of those benefits without any of the downsides by using any other modern styling solution, for example scoped styles and scss. The arguments against this solution far outweigh the arguments for it. You're free to disagree, of course.

<comment><USER4> Scoped styles and SCSS do not prevent you from having to come up with unnecessary names for things like utilities do. That's the main benefit in my opinion. Wasting brain cycles to name arbitrary wrapper divs that only exist to be a target for layout styles things like ".image-card-content-wrapper" is a completely unnecessary step in the UI development process.

Using utility classes to build a UI is much more like building something with SwiftUI, where no one seems to argue about this silly "separation of concerns" thing we talk about on the web.

<comment><USER2> Using SCSS and using some utility classes isn't in any way mutually exclusive. If anything, it's a lot easier to mix and match. The argument isn't against having utility classes/mixins/extensions in general, but against relying on them solely.

I'm still not convinced — using only utility classes has very clear downsides, while using what's reasonably one of the most common approaches in the industry right now avoids those downsides while also providing additional benefits.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you can "only use utility classes". I think they cover 90%+ of your CSS though. I apologize if that came across as the argument I was making.

Yes, you probably will need to create some custom classes from time to time. Ideally those might be done in a utility fashion though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm absolutely loving using Tailwind for my new projects. It makes it so easy to prototype and build out nice designs. Honestly I have never felt so productive when it comes to designing pages.

There is however one thing that prevents me from using it for everything and I'm curious if anyone knows a solution for this. If I am pulling a chunk of rich text from a CMS/backend/whatever, how can I style this?

I tend to use Django for my backend, so in my template files I just put in a chunk like
{{ body }}
. If that chunk has h2,p, etc. none of those are getting styled.

In normal css I could just define what those h2, p, etc look like under a specific class. But besides using some js magic to inject those classes, I'm at a loss.

<comment><USER6> I solved this issue for myself last night using CSS selectors. My goal was to replicate Github Flavored Markdown styling using Tailwind on Hugo generated html. Here is the repo for the stylesheet for anyone who is interested: [https://github.com/iandinwoodie/github-markdown- tailwindcss](https://github.com/iandinwoodie/github-markdown-tailwindcss)

The generated content is wrapped in a div with the class "markdown" (defined in the repo above). So it looks like:
{{ .Content }}

I wrapped up the stylesheet around 2AM this morning, but I plan on expanding the README and un-nesting the class (it was nested for postcss-nesting).

I am just starting a personal site and it is still very much under construction, but I do have a Markdown example page publicly available that I have been using to test the styles. Here is the link in case anyone wants to take a look at the end result: [https://iandinwoodie.github.io/blog/markdown- syntax-guide/](https://iandinwoodie.github.io/blog/markdown-syntax-guide/)

<comment><USER5> Very cool, thanks for sharing the link. I think this is how I'll do it as well.

<comment><USER4> Creator of Tailwind here, that's exactly what I would recommend too.

Here are the markdown styles for my own personal website for example:

[https://gist.github.com/adamwathan/d257699f16ec7cc1b002b5fb7...](https://gist.github.com/adamwathan/d257699f16ec7cc1b002b5fb7f81f35c)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone!

I tweeted a video of the app in action here: [https://twitter.com/utkarshkukreti/status/115832371651577856...](https://twitter.com/utkarshkukreti/status/1158323716515778560)

I made this TailwindCSS Playground over the last two weeks. I really like the core idea of Tailwind and the productivity gains it gives and would like to build more stuff with it in the future!

Features:

* Compile custom @tailwindcss config and CSS in the browser

* Live preview in 5 screen sizes

* Class name autocompletion with CSS definition preview

* Save code online or export .zip

* Vim/Emacs/Sublime key bindings + Emmet

<comment><USER7> I love when in-browser editors support vim keybindings :)

thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> I _had_ to add it -- I can't write code without vim keybindings!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand frameworks like this. You are basically tying presentation with markup. God forbid you want to create more than one theme for the same HTML!

<comment><USER9> Tailwind makes it very easy to change theme by changing just a single configuration file: [https://tailwindcss.com/#designed-to-be- customized](https://tailwindcss.com/#designed-to-be-customized)

It is very liberating to use Tailwind instead of creating unique CSS classes for every div in a page. The code is much more maintainable - in a single stroke Tailwind gets rid of selector specificity issues, design inconsistency, and naming woes.

From a programming perspective, the conventional style of "semantic" CSS classes creates deep and fragile coupling between markup and CSS. It goes against everything good code is supposed to be - when you change the structure of the HTML you're forced to change the CSS, and if you truly use the power of CSS selectors, then modifying CSS becomes a difficult enterprise: one change can create multiple unrelated changes at a distance.

Tailwind solves all this, with just two downsides: until you spend a few hours mucking with it, the markup look will look unwieldy, and you have to be ready to really think about semantic CSS and "separation of concerns" dogma we've taken for granted for so long.

<comment><USER8> I'm looking at the example: [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/utility- first](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/utility-first)

So, if I'm making a theme, and I want a different color for the text, I have to replace "text-gray-900" with my hex code for purple?

Also, what if my theme is about making the design more compact, or increasing density? How do I customize thousands of elements with different combinations of class="ml-6 pt-1"?

Oh, and don't get me started on "bg-white rounded-lg". God forbid your theme wants squared boxes on black background.

<comment><USER9> Don't use `text-gray` if you're building an app that needs to be themed like that. Instead use `text-secondary` or a similar name that you'd otherwise use in a themeable system. Tailwind lets you define _every_ single design token in the system and comes with zero opinions there.

If you want to change density of the design, you can change the spacings centrally in the configuration itself. But if you need a non-proportional change, then it isn't any different than BEM+SASS environment where you'd have to go into every CSS class and make the change. I think it is even better than BEM here because you only need to change classnames in HTML, which is co- located with the style, and it doesn't cause cascading changes due to specificity etc.

To me the opinions you hold seem to come from not having tried it in good faith, which was how I used to judge functional CSS as well. If the current CSS style you use serves you well, that's fine you don't have to explore. But if you've wondered whether there is something wrong with the way we do CSS today, then Tailwind could be an eye-opener.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome project. I am a big fan of Tailwind CSS to and I use it for my current project [1]. I will definitely make use of Tailwind.run() to as a playground to design components! Great job!

[1] [https://gekri.com](https://gekri.com)

<comment><USER11> Your project is a bit similar to mine and I am very curious about how you use Blockstack.

I have been hosting a CouchDB instance myself on a VPN but considered moving to Firebase while prototyping since it seems easier to use. Considering Firebase since it offers offline-first support. However, only today I was made aware of Blockstack and I have seen it mentioned multiple places.

How do you like working with Blockstack and what made you choose it? Does your app work offline? Does it synchronize automatically between devices?

I also want to take data privacy very seriously, since I am dealing with personal and sensitive data (just like a person's journal is very sensitive to them).

<comment><USER10> Blockstack is very easy to get started with and provide user authentication and encrypted data storage out of the box.

About offline-mode, I am about to implement it by my side as this feature is not part of the Blockstack SDK for now.

I am happy that you are taking data privacy very seriously and I guess Blockstack is a good solution to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool! I've been wanting to try a framework like Tailwind, but I get the feeling I'd like something like Atomic CSS [1] better. It generates classes based on what you use, as opposed to Tailwind, which supplies thousands of classes that you may need and leaves it up to you to strip out the ones you don't use (I think?). I dunno, it just seems like Tailwind has it backwards to me, but am I misunderstanding something? Does anyone have experience with both (or some other micro class framework) who can tell me how they compare?

[1] [https://acss.io/](https://acss.io/)

<comment><USER13> I have no experience with Atomic CSS, but I think an important part of Tailwind is that it simultaneously serves as a design system. By having relatively limited options for, let's say, font sizes, you don't spend a lot of time making micro adjustments. The author of Tailwind also co-authored the Refactoring UI book that pretty much explains this philosophy that the framework was built to support. Of course, in the end you can add as much custom CSS as you want, written as utilities or not, but the point is to quickly get to a reasonable design.

<comment><USER14> You have to strike a balance between reusability + a central base of the design/theme which defines the consistent look and feel on one hand with the composable LEGO style building blocks which Basscss [https://basscss.com/](https://basscss.com/) and Tachyons [http://tachyons.io/](http://tachyons.io/) and other similar functional css frameworks made popular.

The problem with the latter is you've coupled the styles to names embedded in the HTML which means a whole lot of grep and replace when things change.

Taking that further with actual custom values being applied in the class names in the view the way Atomic sounds like it's taking that idea too far. Those values should be constrained the way it's done in [https://rebassjs.org/](https://rebassjs.org/) where customization of base values is handled with CSS in JS.

The removal of unused classes can be achieved using tools like PurgeCSS [https://www.purgecss.com/](https://www.purgecss.com/)

Ultimately I've found Tailwind to have the best balance between a composable utility class base approach, with consistent base values, and a mature and good looking parent framework. Otherwise I'd go with one of the smaller utility kits mentioned above for simple projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Taiwind is nice.

For those interested in Functional CSS, I've made a Scss/Sass framework too, with different approach. [https://github.com/meerita/utilcss](https://github.com/meerita/utilcss) here is the article related [http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian- methodology/](http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/)

Once you start using funcional CSS, you don't want to go back.

<comment><USER16> > We have been programming CSS for a long time wrong.

Have we though? I firmly disagree with the premise. I agree that like anything else, css can be abused and misused, and the example cited of Newspapers fits the narrative perfectly. I've worked at a major regional Newspaper in the past and their website was one of the worst sites I've seen. The lead developer at that time (10 years ago) switched to using a functional/semantic css pattern much like tailwind/UCSS, and I found it to be terrible.

Any experienced FE developer should and will know css, whereas they will not know some random css framework dsl, nor should they have to learn it.

Most modern js frameworks are moving towards web-components and scope css to a component, which eliminates much of the past structural ambiguity and reasons for seeing e.g. !important (if implemented properly).

The argument about file size is not strong imo. You are trading css file size for html file size. How many modern web apps are slow due to their css file size? I doubt many. The Newspaper websites were always slow due to churn & many people touching the code, often with lower experience, leading to spaghetti.

If it works for a team then more power to them, but I'm sticking with css :)

<comment><USER15> Hi, yes, the premise is a bit sensationalist. But any FE experienced will not work for too long on the projects. The projects I've surveyed and work for, changed personnel all the time. I didn't choose the projects to fit my narrative, I did it because most projects die within 5-10 years. Few projects live longer than that, and newspapers are great example for the research. The codebase is really hard to maintain as business grows. That's why I firmly believe, it is not the developer, it's the metodologies they use: they force you to do technical debt, bad arquitectures, etc.

Of course functional CSS is not the solution to all, there are situations where, componetize everything will make more sense. But the more you work on, the more useful you see it becomes.

The file size is strong for one reason: most connections to CSS resources are blocked by the queue of priorities, HTML files are downloaded between 12ms-100ms range and that means it's already done, plus, if you use reactive HTML, things speed up even more. Most of the CSS made with BEM or other metodologies don't end up with that much HTML saving too, they're quite verbose. You cannot control the verbosity since it's human made. With UCSS or other funcional frameworks, you can control the verbosity of the outputs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I played around with tailwind on a small project and found it more difficult than I expected. I think part of the problem is that when using tailwind or other similar frameworks, the conceptual model and workflow is different and requires some cognitive overhead to use effectively and efficiently.

Perhaps one day I will try again but personally I want to minimize extra stuff to learn, especially related to css and styling.

</comment><comment><USER18> The major selling point from my point of view, and the reason why I switched from Tachyons, are components. With that, one can easily compose styles.

      .btn {
        @apply cursor-pointer bg-blue border-blue-darker text-white;
      }

When developing a web app, this allows you to have a central style configuration and reusability.

</comment><comment><USER19> Awesome, might just give Tailwind a shot finally. Thanks for the great work. I typically use [https://basscss.com/](https://basscss.com/), but been meaning to checkout larger Atomic CSS frameworks like Tailwind and Tachyons.

Aside from the benefits of "functional CSS" that others have mentioned, one thing I really love about it is I don't have to constantly be looking up CSS rules or properties; I just reference the docs of whatever framework I'm using to get what I want. You might say I could do this with Bootstrap as well -- and yeah, I can, but I much prefer the piece-meal approach of atomic CSS. The times I've used Bootstrap, I found myself fighting their styles constantly, or giving up and resulting with a site that looks like every other Bootstrap page.

</comment><comment><USER20> CSS has one major drawback - that is, there is no way to compose more complex objects from basic ones.

Say, I have a class:

      foo {
         color: #FF0000;
      }

I want to now apply this class to another class:

       bar(foo) {
          background-color: #000000;
       }

I want to be able to inherit from foo, but I can't do that and that's why we have these shenanigans of composable UI frameworks... there are some advantages to doing everything in the HTML but now we have repeating patterns in the HTML, such as in the OP's link

        Tutorials
        Plugins
        Features
        Blog

which is not extensible and creates duplicate code. You'd still have duplicate class names but I just have to change it once in the css instead of N different places in HTML.

<comment><USER21> TailwindCSS does have that:

[https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting- components](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting-components)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tailwind is quite nice for raw prototyping. I'm still not how it compares to basscss. I would love a pure scss version of tailwind.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome! I started using Tailwind for a project. I was a concern with the relatively big size of the framework on a landing page[1]. Then I used purgeCss to only leave the css classes that I used and remove all others. That solved the size issue.

[1] [https://uxeranalytics.com/](https://uxeranalytics.com/)

<comment><USER24> Is there any purgecss equivalent, that is a local tool and is not node.js? I've recently searched for that and only found a defunct Ruby gem. Does the Golang world have nothing like that?

<comment><USER25> shameless plug: [https://github.com/leeoniya/dropcss](https://github.com/leeoniya/dropcss)

it's still written in JS but there is nothing node-specific there. it easily runs in a browser, or any js environment.

<comment><USER24> Thanks a lot! It looks good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It looks nice, but exported CSS is 880 kB unminified (670 kB minified). Yikes. Is there a way to strip out unused portions of it?

<comment><USER27> See [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file- size/](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Awesome! I haven't used Tailwind for any big projects (yet!) but I _have_ tinkered with it, and I really like it.

Good work!

</comment><comment><USER29> That are some bloated classes. it's no different in inline styling everything to me. I really don't see the benefit in doing it this way. Can you use tailwinds and scss to create actual styling rules? No that is something I could get behind.

</comment><comment><USER30> Been really productive using Tailwind myself. Recently re-launched my SideProjectors site ([https://www.sideprojectors.com](https://www.sideprojectors.com)) and was able to get my CSS developed very fast. I have most of Tailwind classes in my head now, so I hardly look up their site for references. Being able to quickly edit the UI without much thinking is very refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, this is awesome, I have always felt comfortable using css utilities like px-2, text-center, or border-0, this goes next level, super interesting.

</comment><comment><USER32> I recently tried learning Tachyons, I couldn't get the hang of it, until I was on the train with no internet and I only had an example blog site loaded, and the table of styles. I was able to put together my new website theme in an hour.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very nice! I'm hoping that this can be a catalog and discovery tool in the future where we can showcase Tailwind components. Looking forward to it!

</comment><comment><USER34> Love it! I'm using Tailwindcss on a project now, and this tool will come in pretty handy!

</comment><comment><USER35> I can't tell from this what Tailwind actually is, or how to use it.

<comment><USER36> "A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom designs."

It's an excellent description in of it's own, but if I were to attempt to put it in other terms, it allows you to compose css components and classes out of other smaller, essentially one liner css classes, while maintaining a consistent styling and spacing across the different utilities, which you define up front using the config but also comes with good defaults out of the box.

It is excellent and now my preferred method for hacking up a new site. It also helps you think about your design system overall so now I find myself paying attention to things up front I would normally wouldn't and it ends up saving me time in the long run. It also pairs really well with the excellent Refactoring UI book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do i need to be an expert in CSS first to use this ?</comment>


Why Pixar uses Microsoft's Azure - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/226427.asp

<comment><USER2> Pixar doesn't use Azure. Pixar demonstrated a proof of concept that involved using Azure instances as virtual processors for a cloud-based Renderman farm that MIGHT be attractive for CG shops that can't afford, or don't need, a fulltime render farm. Maybe there's a shop somewhere that would be useful for, but it's certainly not going to be a Pixar or an ILM.

The biggest issue with a cloud farm like this is going to be bandwidth. For cinematic CG the models, textures and other assets are absolutely huge - it's not unusual for a single shot to come to hundreds of gigabytes. And you tweak and render, and tweak and render. Often the size of the data is such that when there is a need to collaborate with a different FX shop the files are sent over Sneakernet - HDD via courier or overnight FedEx.

If I was to guess, I would say this is basically virtualization technology developed for in-house use (which is very useful) that has been turned into a cloud demo for Azure. Why I don't know, but Pixar won't be switching to Azure anytime soon (or ever).

<comment><USER3> "For cinematic CG the models, textures and other assets are absolutely huge - it's not unusual for a single shot to come to hundreds of gigabytes."

I recall reading an article, IIRC in CineFX, about the Godzilla model in Gozilla 2000 (the Devlin and Emmerich film). The textures for their Godzilla model alone were something like 900 MB.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Pixar introduced a renderfarm hosted in Azure.

Although the amount of data is very large, you don't general end up taking the bandwidth hit all at once. If you have your renderfarm set up on Azure, you could set up a plugin for your animation software, e.g. Maya, that uploads the assets for the scene you're working on and renders it on an Azure virtual machine configured with multiple processors, then download the rendered image data. One you upload the assets once, you will rarely if ever have to upload the whole lot of them again if the render management software is smart enough to keep track of which files you've modified since the last time you rendered. So you've modified a mesh but none of its textures, it only needs to upload the mesh in order to re-render.

It's hardly trivial, and for the larger shops like WETA Digital that are creating massive, virtual sets with massive, virtual armies modeled and rendered with Massive (couldn't resist :)), they can afford an in-house renderfarm -- and the costs will favor it.

For a smaller shop, that might not be so easy, BUT there are shops that are pulling off some pretty amazing animations without buying the pricey software... outfitting a renderfarm with Photorealistic RenderMan or Mental Ray or Final Render licenses can get quite expensive -- when last I checked, it was something like $2000 or $2500 per machine for a Mental Ray rendernode license. PhotoRealistic RenderMan was in the same price range.

<comment><USER4> WETA Digital uses Ubuntu Server on their server farm and desktops:

[http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu- linux-...](http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-linux-used- making-avatar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know who actually deploys Windows based cloud/Internet-facing systems? All the big corporate IT shops I've consulted for only used Windows servers to support Windows clients and that kind of stuff doesn't move to the cloud well. All the big Internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc) deploy on Linux as far as I've seen. Most startups I've heard about deploy on Linux VPS/Heroku/AppEngine type infrastructures. I also though most of the 3D rendering was being done on Linux but maybe that is not the case.

The only example I've seen of windows deployment was dpreview.com, and the comments I read from them were in the line of "it's not as bad as everyone says it is and we're familiar with the stack so we use it".

Is windows a large percentage of EC2 for example? I tried to google for that but couldn't find anything.

<comment><USER6> This might help: <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/evidence/>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that. A lot of them seem to be one-off projects. I'm still trying to find how much of EC2 runs windows but can't seem to locate that figure.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if Amazon would disclose that number. It can be a sensitive number for a company to make business strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't seem like they are actually using Azure for their films. The article says this was a proof of concept.

<comment> brown9-2 Oddly, this correction doesn't appear until the middle of the article:

 _Clarification: The RenderMan/Azure demo shown was a proof of concept._

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Huh... was sort of hoping that the article would answer the question that it asked... "it'll be around for a while" isn't a great answer considering Microsoft's history with some of it's service platforms.

</comment><comment><USER9> The headline is very misleading, they aren't using it at all. It was a proof of concept only.

</comment><comment><USER10> They also mention that Pixar was co founded by Steve jobs instead of purchased from George Lucas.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pixar using Azure to render movies would be like Microsoft building Azure on top of Amazon EC2. Pixar and Microsoft probably _could_ do these things, and arguments could be made for the economic advantages, but they'd be giving up opportunities for competitive advantages, and letting outsiders get them by the short and curlies in the context of crucial aspects of their businesses.

I _could_ see Pixar working with Microsoft to make Azure-hosted Renderman available for other groups doing rendered projects. For a small film project, I'd think that could be really useful.

Then again, Photorealistic Renderman was in NeXTSTEP 3.0, and you could split a rendering job among local NeXT machines as easily as choosing render hosts from a GUI list. That didn't mean Pixar was rendering their Listerine commercials on 25Mhz 68040 boxes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone have a sense of who the market is for cloud-based 3D rendering? It seems like even for a small-to-medium-sized shop it's likely to be worthwhile to have a pretty solid baseline capacity in house...

<comment><USER13> I would think it's the opposite: for a small-to-medium shop it makes all kinds of sense to concentrate on your core (design, animation, client development) and just rent "rendering as a service".

a) If you have a small headcount, a dedicated server wrangler's salary would be better used to pay for a person with a more product-oriented profile. That's what makes the difference between you and your competition: you aren't writing your own renderers anyway.

b) When maintaining your own serverfarm it can be difficult for you to have the jobs pipeline full at all times, and you can either have a lot of spare capacity sitting around between jobs, or need more horsepower during peaks.

c) This also allows small-to-medium shops to tackle problems bigger than they could otherwise from a pure cashflow point of view. If you are renting rendering-as-a-service, your clients are paying for the hardware their jobs need, no need to invest, amortize, etc. Just pay an invoice coming in and an cash an invoice going out.

It seems to me that these are exactly the kind of problems SaaS is designed to solve, and that small-to-medium shops can benefit from this solution more than big studios who can:

a) amortize their server wranglers over bigger installations, so their sysadmin/creative ratio is lower.

b) keep the rendering farm working efficiently, or even rent it out if they have lulls in work.

c) afford big financial investments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Green Button is a startup already doing this: <http://www.greenbutton.net/>

They even use Azure. They don't specifically support Renderman, though. (At least, not yet.)

Like other posters here, I would be curious to know why these companies are using Azure instead of some other cloud platform.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nothing in the article says anything about Pixar using Azure other than a proof of concept and gives no answer to the leading question.

Pixar is founded by George Lucas then bought and nurtured by Steve Jobs though :)

</comment><comment><USER16> There was a similar system (on demand render farm "in the cloud") on WAM!Net in... 1999? the more it changes, the more it's the same :)

</comment><comment><USER17> If a job posting to work at a Pixar server farm is anything to go by, they actually use Linux for their films.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article does not address the technical reasons why Pixar chose to demonstrate this proof of concept using Azure.

Mad props to roadnottaken though for this other gem: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1744214></comment>


Show HN: Raspberry Pi Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://raspberry.io/projects/view/raspberry-pi-laptop/ <comment><USER2> I have the same/similar hardware.

It auto-powers on when the HDMI is connected. There's not a good way to get it to power off without just unplugging it.

You get roughly 3-4 hours of battery life.

The Raspberry Pi is woefully underpowered compared to modern PC's in terms of CPU performance. I'd put it in the same class as say middling Pentium III. The GPU is decent for a phone, if all you're doing is 2D/video stuff.

Some of the keyboard docks have a UK layout, which actually matches the default layout loaded by the Pi.

There's nothing that ties this to the Pi specifically - you could easily do the same with something like this quad-A9 board and get radically better performance (at the cost of battery life): [http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.ph...](http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135341370451)

<comment><USER3> > The GPU is decent for a phone, if all you're doing is 2D/video stuff.

The lack of CPU power wouldn't be such a big issue, since the real computing power of the Pi is in the GPU anyways, except that you can't actually do anything else with the GPU, because you need to use Broadcom's driver blob.

As a side note, I think it's pretty disappointing to have an "educational", "open" computer that blocks you from actually using all the hardware.

[1]: <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2221#comment-34981>

<comment><USER4> It is a bit disappointing, but they have taken the pragmatic view, that it is better to have what they have delivered than nothing at all.

I would really like to see what the full capabilities of the chip are. The GPU seems to implement almost the full GLES driver itself. As I recall, it iss compiling the shaders GPU side. That's some considerable general purpose computing hidden behind the wall.

<comment><USER5> There are two major programmable parts to the GPU - the Videocore CPU (VPU) and the shader processors (QPU).

The VPU is dual core with a 16 way SIMD integer unit with a 64x64 byte vector register file, and 32 register 32 bit scalar register file. Its accessible now, for instance see: [https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCor...](https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore- IV-Kernels-under-Linux)

There are a few people targeting compilers and assemblers at the VPU. I think vbcc will probably come first, but I'm aware of people hacking on gcc and llvm.

I generate all assembly from emit() calls in C, but I may publish a better assembler soon.

The QPU work is not so advanced, but we actually have had a handle on the QPU instruction format for a while now, but we need more hands on deck to expose it in the open. There is also a challenge of hooking into the blob and dispatching QPU fragments. I would hope we have something working by the Q3.

See [https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCor...](https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/wiki/VideoCore- IV-3d-Graphics-Pipeline) for some preliminary background.

The QPU instructions have 3 VLIW style slots - <fp-add; fp-mul; signal>. I'll push a qpu.arch when I get some time back on the raspberrypi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually a very good idea.

I already have one of those $100 Android netbooks[1] you can get from Alibaba.com, but it's Android[2]. I would pay $200 for an ultra-lightweight Raspberry Pi netbook that was in the same netbook shell as my android netbook. In fact, I've been looking everywhere for some steps to installing RaspberryPi(or any linux) onto my Android netbook.

1\. [http://dx.com/p/v712-10-lcd-android-4-0-netbook-w-wi-fi- rj45...](http://dx.com/p/v712-10-lcd-android-4-0-netbook-w-wi-fi-rj45-camera- hdmi-sd-slot-black-189164)

2.Not that I don't like Android, I have 2 legit android devices that I use daily; Kindlefire with SimpleCM9 and the Samsung GalaxyPlayer50(not the phone). Just that, a hacked-together Android netbook isn't the best experience... but it's very lightweight and battery-life is like an iPad or better. After installing Chrome/Firefox and Google Keep(or evernote), it's at least good enough to take into meetings... and netflix works on it. But beware! It's headphone jack isn't stereo; you only get sound in the left-ear! Go buy mono-headphones.

<comment><USER7> >> I would pay $200 for an ultra-lightweight Raspberry Pi netbook

ARM Chromebook. Much more powerful than Pi. Can run Ubuntu and other linuxes. Much sleeker than the thing in your link.

<comment><USER8> Honestly, I think Google should be looking at ditching Chrome and making it into a skin on Android. They've over-fragmented their own market by having so many different platforms.

<comment><USER9> Google doesn't control Android anymore, plus Chrome has always been a more web and media based OS.

I'm honestly surprised that Google hasn't partnered with a TV manufacturer to have the chrome OS installed out of the box.

<comment><USER8> They bet on GoogleTV for that (and have apparently quietly abandoned that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've got two of these Lapdocks, I bought them for $50 back when they first started being liquidated. I currently use one as the display for a BeagleBone Black for some project I'm working on.

This setup isn't really anything new, people were running this sort of thing a year ago, and there are lots of variations of it including embedding TV-HDMI- stick systems (like the RK3188) directly into the case hinge of the lapdock so you have something more like a standard laptop.

In any case, I highly recommend picking up the lapdock if you can find one for a good price. I'm not sure I'd pay close to $100 for one, but for $50 they were a great deal. They make great displays for Linux ARM SoC projects. If you actually want an ARM based laptop for general purpose laptop stuff, the Samsung ARM Chromebook already mentioned in this thread is a better all-around solution for not much more money.

</comment><comment><USER11> The raspberry pi is absolutely not the cool thing about this set up[1]. The cool thing is that in 12 months you can switch out your SOC for a better one.

1\. The pi is good because it has a large community and GPIO pins, it's a terrible choice for a 'PC' device today-- it's pretty much the weakest CPU you can get in the ARM/SOC world, with an out of date instruction set (v6 vs v7). You'd be much better off going with a beaglebone black or MK802, at the low end, with a world of more powerful options.

<comment><USER12> I have a budget (£99) Android phone from Samsung, non-contract (pay as you go/"pre-paid"). It has an 800MHz processor and web browsing on it is great. I have a Raspberry Pi, it has a 700MHz processor. The web browsing experience with more than one tab is awful. It can barely handle 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My boss told me about this on Friday. Looks cool. He's ordered the parts from E-bay. I have a Pi, and I'm using it to learn to teach breaking and fixing Debian.

(So far I've learned that ARMv7 is supported by debian armhf, and ARMv6 is the hardfloat support offered by the Pi. And that this difference is so important, that somewhere deep in the Perl modules of Debconf, is a breaking change that apt can't resolve for itself when you upgrade raspbian to plain debian armhf.)

Check out this coolness:

      pi@raspberrypi ~ $ /usr/share/debconf/frontend
      Illegal instruction

<comment><USER13> I really was looking for help with this, I spent some time delving into the perl modules and tracing the errors, I came up onto some collection of Debconf modules that just did not seem to have a central "source" of the problem, just a lot of co-dependent requires and I could not trace back to find what needed repair.

It's somewhere there, in /usr/share/debconf/frontend. If I knew what package had problems, I could fix it with `dpkg` or even `ar -x`, since Apt-Get really wants Debconf and friends to work in order to do its job... but as-is, I can't even install any version of dash from the correct repositories without bombing out in post-install, and I feel really lucky to even have a shell to attempt a fix, at this point.

If anyone has a Pi and they're comfortable breaking it (to see for yourself, or to help me figure it out), change your apt-sources to like this:

      deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian wheezy main

If you are on raspbian and your arch is armhf, proceeding through `apt-get update && apt-get -uy dist-upgrade` will almost totally hose your system. Reboot, log in, have a keyboard and mouse for the next part.

Network/interfaces will be broken so you'll need those, because you just ruined /bin/ip, it will segfault. Keep a copy of the old iproute package from raspbian, or be sure you know how to use ifconfig and route to get back online so you can download another one, since dhclient will also be hosed. It either segfaults or depends on /bin/ip.)

The only way to come back from this I've found is re-flashing the original raspbian image. I can't do it because my SD card does not read in my laptop / I'm stubborn and convinced that it can still be fixed.

You will not be able to install any packages that have Debconf post-install hooks, b/c illegal instruction in perl, some depended module. That's the part I can't figure out.

A lot of other things will be broken until you revert libc6 and libstdc++6 to the version provided by raspbian. At this point,

      dpkg --get-selections|cut -f 1

and

      apt-get --reinstall install

are your best friends. But it won't fix everything. It needs Debconf to be intact for some things to complete.

<comment><USER13> I figured it out. I needed this to tip me off:

      dpkg --get-selections|cut -f 1|xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -ud 2>&1 \
      |grep 'it cannot be downloaded'|awk '{print $3}'

Some packages were not being downgraded because apt-get won't downgrade them without explicit directions on what version to download, even if it's the only version in pool for your target.

I needed either libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl, libpthread-stubs0, or libtext- charwidth-perl, and after that, only menu was the last remaining Segmentation fault. Extracting the package manually and replacing /usr/bin/update-menus enabled me to reinstall the remaining packages without errors from debconf and friends.

\-- Sorry, spoiler, if anyone was following my awful example.

I definitely did not follow the shortest path thru this maze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> According to the footer this site is run by the PSF[0] - but I don't see any mention of it elsewhere.

Worthy of note, this physical mobile app tester[1] looks awesome.

[0]: <http://www.python.org/psf/> [1]: [http://raspberry.io/projects/view/touchy-the-mobile- testing-...](http://raspberry.io/projects/view/touchy-the-mobile-testing- robot/)

<comment><USER15> It's mentioned on the About Raspberry IO page[2].

"The goal of Raspberry IO is to create, share, learn and teach the open-source community about using Raspberry Pi with Python."

[2]: <http://raspberry.io/about-raspberry-io/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are a bunch of people making portable pi systems.

This one is pretty easy. It's also weirdly expensive considering the power of the machine you end up with. Ignoring the cost of the Pi - something like this costing about $50 would be great. I guess you could scavenge parts together. It's useful for some forums and very light web work. I don't know if that's evidence of the web failing or succeeding - that a 750 MHz machine isn't powerful enough for it.

Other people are being a little bit more adventurous. Here's one with a 3d printed case ([http://blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry- pi-...](http://blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry-pi-computer- build-your-own-portable-rpi-to-go/)) It's not as sleek as, for example, an OQO umpc but it's still pretty nice for something built at home.

This setup looks clunky, but the aim is to be powered off anything. ([http://www.instructables.com/id/Port-a-Raspberry-Pi- Project/...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Port-a-Raspberry-Pi- Project/#intro))

Odd form factors abound. (<http://www.skpang.co.uk/blog/archives/541>) (fingerprints and dust would drive me bonkers with that clear acrylic!)

Here's a portable MAME system. This is interesting because of the limited keyboard. ([http://blog.makezine.com/2013/01/22/portable-raspberry-pi- ma...](http://blog.makezine.com/2013/01/22/portable-raspberry-pi-mame- device/))

Having read through a bunch of these I wish they'd start to use sleeving when they splice cables together. Little bits of heatshrink or hellerene tubing makes all the difference to reliability and neatness.

It seems the RPi is fulfilling its role as an educational tinkerer's gadget.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seeing the title I expected to see a powered-on laptop with an empty case save for a small Raspberry Pi board inside...

</comment><comment><USER18> There's also this:

[http://thegreyhats.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/so-i-have-two- rasp...](http://thegreyhats.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/so-i-have-two-raspberry- pis-i-love-them.html)

And probably a few others around the Internet as well. Perhaps some enterprising person could come up with a laptop into which you plug in a raspberry pi?

</comment><comment><USER19> I did a similar write up in /r/raspberry_pi a while ago of what to buy and how to setup:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/1039qv/got_my_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/1039qv/got_my_pi_lapdock_working_config_details_inside/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The Atrix, too bad. Like polshaw said, I agree that the Pi is the weakness in the set up. It's like taking a honda engine and putting it in a BMW. I thought the Atrix and the accessories were awesome, just wasn't a fan of the low specs and Android.

I do have hope though for Ubuntu's mobile offering...wait that runs on an Atrix too, lol.

</comment><comment><USER21> What type of battery life would you get assuming no gui and not using HDMI? Now that there is an Arch immage for the pi with Emacspeak I've considered building something like this to take notes at meetings to avoid having to haul my work laptop around.

<comment><USER19> It gets around 4-5 hours. You have to have ___some_ __HDMI signal or else the Lapdock auto-powers off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Off topic: I can see quite a few misspellings of quite :p

</comment><comment><USER23> what is the maximum portable battery life that can be gained from this system, how long does the monitor run in low power mode? I'd like to know if you could beat the Samsung 3 Chromebook with this (6.5 hours) and get some work done in perhaps 10 hours?

<comment><USER11> I have the 'lapdock' used here; with a phone (the original use case) IIRC it was quoted for 9 hours.. and that must have included powering the phone too, because it would keep the phone battery full. So, possible, i think.

<comment><USER23> Wow, that's impressive. How is the typing on it, is there a keyboard, is it smaller or the similar to current netbook keyboards? So if you could connect a Nexus 4 phone to it with hdmi, hack Linux on that phone you'd have a netbook comparable in performance to the current atom netbooks and a bit slower then the Samsung 303 chromebook.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to bookmark/save a story? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Point - simple Chrome extension that makes clipping and sharing stories quick and seamless: [http://www.getpoint.co](http://www.getpoint.co)

Evernote - tried and true, particularly great for tagging and saving: www.evernote.com

</comment><comment><USER3> If you mean on HN, saved stories = up voted stories.</comment>


Privacy not Prism – UK legal challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.privacynotprism.org.uk/ <comment><USER2> I just donated £20.

I think it's worth making this as public as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's times like this that I'm very glad the ECHR exists.

<comment><USER4> If UKIP had their way, we wouldn't be in the European Union or Council of Europe and would be withdrawn from the Human Rights Convention.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but UKIP are nutters.

<comment><USER6> Nutters that are becoming increasingly popular.

<comment><USER7> I don't think UKIP have much support here in Scotland - I suspect most people see them as the "Little Englander" party:

[http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/why-ukip- ha...](http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/why-ukip-has-no- relevance-in-scotland.22300279)

<comment><USER8> Well, if the SNP had had their way you'd be in the Euro instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paypal blocked my card when trying to donate, won't start a conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER10> What's the best P2P paypal alternative?

I'm off of paypal for accepting payments but would love a solid alternative to sending money to people internationally (Chase Quickpay is great but you can't do international xfers).

<comment><USER9> TransferWise is a great way to transfer money internationally with low fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't believe anyone still thinks international tribunals are a good idea. As if not bad enough for unelected judges to subvert democracy in their own county, but now you can have unelected judges in other countries subvert democracy in yours!

<comment><USER12> > unelected judges to subvert democracy...

If your definition of 'democracy' is a system of tyranny of the majority, where an elected government can do whatever it likes, create law in its own image without constitutional limit or fetter (for fear of 'subverting democracy'), then I don't particularly want to live in a democracy. And, thankfully, I don't.

Liberal democracy (in the classical sense) has the principle of _Rule of Law_ rather than _Rule of Man_ , with associated elements of due process, human rights, etc. ranking as more important than political will. This necessarily entails a disinterested, unelected, apolitical judiciary to decide when the legislature or executive has breached your constitution / human rights document / etc. This seems to work out a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

(Even if you reject that - and the UK in theory does have a system of Parliamentary sovereignty rather than legal sovereignty - it's still hardly 'subverting democracy'. The situation here is still the executive (GCHQ) may be acting in violation of the will of Parliament (as expressed in the HRA1998). Parliament delegates the task of deciding when the executive has violated its law to various judicial bodies, domestic and international).

<comment><USER11> "Democracy" is tyranny of the majority. In our constitutional republics, we have courts as a check on democracy, and that's necessary. Sometimes, those courts strike down programs generally supported by the electorate. Sometimes that's necessary too, but it's always a subversion of democracy.

However, courts ultimately derive their principles of justice from the values and traditions of a people. That's why international tribunals can have no legitimacy. It makes utterly no sense for judges in other countries, representative of people in other countries with different values and traditions, to weigh in on the actions of elected officials in your country. That's why Americans broadly dislike the idea, and I'd guess the majority of Britons do too.

<comment><USER12> > However, courts ultimately derive their principles of justice from the > values and traditions of a people.

That's a valid POV, but it can hardly be stated as fact. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its existence to a broad consensus that, actually, certain fundamental principles of human rights _are_ universal, and a South African has as much of a right to not be tortured by his government as an Englishman does. Of course, not everyone agrees, but denying any kind of universal quality to human rights is a fairly... niche form of cultural relativism.

> That's why international tribunals can have no legitimacy.

Aaand that's just a non-sequitur. The ECtHR has legal legitimacy to rule on UK issues because the UK voluntarily signed the ECHR. Its rulings do _not_ have direct effect in the UK, but have a certain amount of indirect effect nevertheless because Parliament passed a law in 1998 giving them that. (FWIW, since then, the ECHR - which was mostly drafted by an Englishman - can also be enforced domestically in UK courts, and the ECtHR have only rarely overruled UK courts on ECHR interpretation issues).

So the situation here is the executive (GCHQ) possibly acting in violation of the will of Parliament (as expressed in the HRA1998). Parliament has delegated the task of deciding when the executive has violated its law to various judicial bodies, domestic and international. That's not subverting democracy. It's enforcing it.

<comment><USER13> It's probably not enforcing democracy, since polls seem to show a overwhelming majority of Britons have problems with the ECHR.

<comment><USER12> I could take issue with this implicit identification of 'democracy' with 'issue-by-issue 50%-majoritarian direct democracy' (i.e. the idea that democracy is whatever a >50% majority in a referendum would currently show on each issue taken separately). Many countries flirt with some elements of direct democracy (Switzerland goes furthest, that I know of), but none go _that_ far. So the implication that that's the actual true form of democracy is arguably a bit silly.

...And this is getting perilously close to philosophical wankery over competing definitions of the word 'democracy', which doesn't make for a very interesting discussion, so I should probably stop there :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can also donate to the Open Rights Group here: [https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/)

It's Direct Debit (not credit card / paypal) which means less fees.

</comment><comment><USER15> Rant on: Why is it that people use "Prism" as synonym for the whole state of government surveillance? PRISM is one specific program of the NSA, there is much more and there is much worse (eg TEMPORA).

<comment><USER16> The less focused the effort, the more diluted the message.

<comment><USER15> That sounds vague and random. You could also say an un-focused effort misses the bigger picture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Worth pointing out that they can't make an application to the ECtHR until all legal appeals have been exhausted in the UK (Supreme Court?). Otherwise the application will be immediately rejected.

<comment><USER18> ORG have a lot of very smart legal minds on their team. I've worked with some of them: I'm 100% sure they already know the legal issues.

They'll do this the right way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is very dangerous initiative. Because if you loose such a case in the UK, British users will be doomed like forever.

<comment><USER20> So basically you're saying "don't fight it; you might lose"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Donated :) Love seeing this sort of direct action!

</comment><comment><USER22> comic sans ms, really?

<comment><USER22> ahh, it looks like that's because I have remote fonts disabled (security) and it picked comic sans ms as the closest.. for some reason.

<comment><USER23> CSS font family defaults should be sensible. I thought the Comic Sans looked unprofessional until you pointed out that NoScript was blocking a dynamic font.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Use Pinterest Messages in Your Marketing Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.massplanner.com/new-pinterest-use-pinterest-messages-marketing/

<comment><USER2> cool feature, it is a long time coming :)</comment>


Reflection tricks in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aviddiviner/tricks <comment><AUTHOR> So I was going through my old Github projects and I found this gem that I hacked up earlier this year, and I was wondering... what do you people think? Is it worth finishing this abomination? Maybe useful as a nice test helper or something?</comment>


Myst Online to be released fully open-source - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10122588-62.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1001_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> Has anyone looked at mining a codebase like this before? Is it possible to extract useful parts for your own work, or is the codebase usually pretty tightly coupled, and/or inscrutable?

<comment><USER3> If nothing else, it'll be amazingly useful to make a similar/adapted work from it.

I remember a good while ago, there was another game company working on a military vehicle game that went belly-up and released their source code. I was able to use one of their OpenGL libraries for a side project of mine and it came in handy. It was actually just rewarding to use it as a reference when there was so little well-performing example code out back then.

My experience with game development shops is that they often have a vision of making engines/tools that they can reuse for other games or the sequel. So there's a good chance there are at least a few libraries (especially closer to the user or to the hardware) that will be reusable.

<comment><USER2> Good to hear.</comment></comment></comment>


SCVNGR's Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics/ <comment><USER2> Jesse Schell should get credit for the game cards concept ttp://artofgamedesign.com/cards/ as well as popularizing a lot of the talk about Game Mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, "Fun once, fun always" is the real key to a game that continues to be fun (and therefore keeps players). In a game about shooting virtual guns or driving virtual cars or building virtual cities, those basic actions had better continue to be enjoyable; no amount of rewards layered on top will fix a game with a poor basic mechanic.

(As a side note, my first thought when reading "Rolling physical goods" was "Donkey Kong".)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great list, but I sense in a year or two a backlash by users who develop 'game-resistance': "Stop toying with me!"

<comment><USER5> Interesting, do you think StackOverflow.com users are going to be part of this backlash? If done right, the game mechanics aspect of an application shouldn't feel like a separate feature or game.

<comment><USER6> what parts of stackoverflow.com are game-mechanics? if it's what shows up in that yellow bar, i wouldn't know because it's too annoying to pay attention to.

<comment><USER7> Points (reputation) and badges that are earned through various ways in interacting with the site

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice. Those 47 points are basically the Bible of Game Mechanics.

<comment><USER8> I disagree.

This is totally missing most of the fundamental game mechanics that make FPSes fun, platformers fun, etc.

In fact it misses out much of what makes WoW fun for end level raiders.

Re-reading it this feels more like a deck of false rewards to make people think they're playing a game when they're not.

<comment><USER9> Exactly.

These aren't game mechanics, they're psychological hacks. Classic game designers used all these 'mechanics' as a sort of spice, to enhance the solid gameplay already in place. Games like Farmeville are refined and condensed spice. No meat, just flavor.

Personally, after playing Diablo as a kid for god knows how long, I vowed to never play a 'grinding' game again. I suspect (but definitely am not certain) that most new casual gamers will go through their own experience, and come out the other side more immune to these hacks.

<comment><USER10> Of course, I was the old Total Annihilation buff. I had a few mods on it, mainly adding up to 1000 units per side, and up to 10 players.

The most I played was 6 sides, each of us around 800 units each, with 200 en route to someone elses base. Those games lasted for around 5 hours, which were a blast!

Then we compiled a private epic build system on top of advanced that had mechs, berthas on wheels, and walking fusions. The doomsday device was a nuclear launcher that would, on impact, destroy a 22 screen radius of everything. When you're playing on Real Earth v2, which is 128x128 screens (at 1024x768) you need big skills.

None of this "click on buttons to make xp go bigger" or other gimmicks of these net games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One complaint: the reward schedule rules are scattered all throughout, fixed, interval, variable, etc.

19\. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules

20\. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule

...

23\. Interval Reward Schedules

...

34\. Ratio Reward Schedules

...

38\. Reward Schedules

...

44\. Variable Interval Reward Schedules

45\. Variable Ratio Reward Schedules

What's with the ordering? It doesn't even go from most general to most specific? Is the list ordering a game mechanic itself (that would be meta)

<comment><USER12> The mechanics are ordered alphabetically.</comment></comment>


Nuff – The Network Universal Frame Forge - <AUTHOR> http://www.hcsw.org/nuff/

<comment><USER2> Not a single "nuff said" pun throughout the readme, man page, or language spec. Dissapoint.</comment>


Rice Paddies and Math Tests - <AUTHOR> http://gladwell.com/outliers/rice-paddies-and-math-tests/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see how this compares with French, whose numbering system is complex (at least when you get to the 90s).</comment>


Effects of High Glucose and High Fructose Diets on Body Weight in Rats - <AUTHOR> http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/16/3/229.pdf

<comment><USER2> Weight gain is the same (not surprising since calories are the same), liver is 22% bigger in fructose fed rates. This is an old study, BTW.

Here's a 2009 study comparing fructose and glucose for humans: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/></comment>


Django-Based Blog on Google App Engine Tutorial, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.joeyb.org/view/django-based_blog_on_google_app_engine_tutorial_part_1

<comment><USER2> I've been looking into what helper I should use for App Engine + Django. I've been trying to decide between google-app-engine-django (what this tutorial uses) and the app-engine-patch.

<http://code.google.com/p/google-app-engine-django/>

<http://code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/>

Anyone have an comparisons or recommendations?

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone give me some basic cost estimates for running a blog like this? Obviously it fluctuates depending on usage, but even a ball park would help.

Currently I'm planning on doing my blog off of webfaction with Django, but I'm not sure how they'd compare?

<comment><USER4> If you can run under the free quota, its free. Most blogs probably will run within that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also wrote a Django App Engine site for my blog, just to check out App Engine: <http://www.andrewljohnson.com>. It is in fact really easy to use.

I'll give the source to anyone who wants it :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I wrote one <http://teh.appspot.com/> many months back. The source is here: <http://github.com/btbytes/teh/tree/master></comment>


There's A Gold-Dispensing ATM on West 57th Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.scoutingny.com/gold-dispensing-atm-on-west-57th-street/ <comment><USER2> I have seen more than one of these "vending machines" in Dubai.

Interesting thing is that they constantly adjust the price of the gold bars as the price of gold fluctuates. I guess these machines need a permanent internet connection to receive the current gold price.

Who will be the first to do a MITM and adjust the price to 0.001? ;)

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, other than owning a lump of gold, what exactly are you supposed to do with it once you have it?

<comment><USER4> Talk about how you own a lump of gold, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those silver American Eagles make a great, almost magical from the child's perspective, alternative to the lame-o paper dollar under the pillow when your kid looses a tooth, but I would recommend working your way up to them as it gets a little expensive, especially if you have more than one toddler.

<comment><USER6> It'd never occurred to me that you'd get a note for a tooth in the US. Would be an expensive habit in the UK to give notes away.

<comment><USER7> Isn't the smallest denomination of a U.K. note £5? In the U.S. it's $1, which is currently worth about £0.60.

<comment><USER8> Gee, I got U.S. quarters ($0.25) as a kid.

<comment><USER9> same, if I was lucky it was a half dollar.

<comment><USER10> You must always take inflation into account in these comparisons.

$0.25 in 1970 has equivalent purchasing power of 1.48$ right now.

And $0.50 in 1985 matches to pretty much exact $1 right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you have some time, and are interested in culture, architecture, history or just New York from an interesting perspective, it's worth reading some more of Scouting NY. There's a whole lot of very interesting material there, and some nice photographs too.

</comment><comment><USER12> Saw this a little while back, the novelty is fun, but the prices are really, really high.

Silver spot right now is ~$19/oz and they're selling it for $88, a 360%+ markup (granted this is a coin vs a bar).

Gold spot is ~$1260/oz, and their 1oz is $1367, 8.5% markup, their 10g is $1389/oz, a 10% markup.

If you were interested in gold, you could get from APMEX for $1,336.83/oz credit, or less for cash. Or from a nice man in the diamond district for spot plus $50 cash.

<comment><USER13> The $88 coin must be a special coin and/or in proof condition. They are selling an American Silver Eagle for $27 which is still a huge markup, but not 360%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We now have a bitcoin ATM at MIT.

[https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/oR6yjEt.jpg)

<comment><USER15> This is in the COOP? Interesting, I should go check it out today.

<comment><USER14> Yep

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Conceptually, is this an ATM or a vending machine?

<comment><USER17> Practically, it depends on whether the markup is in line with the spread for street currency exchange, or in line with vending machine markup versus wholesale cost of goods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand these. What are people using it for? Is it just for novelty purposes, and as a promotional tool for gold as an investment?

<comment><USER19> Goldbugs like anonymity. You know, in case Obama decides to pull an FDR and confiscate all their precious Au.

<comment><USER20> Except you have to use an ATM debit card in the machine. If you wanted anonymity or lack of traceability, I think you'd rather buy with cash, probably using an actual in-person transaction.

(I don't know if the US or other countries require registering identity of people buying gold in person in cash? I don't think the US does).

<comment><USER21> Any cash purchase (of anything, not gold in particular) over $10,000 requires submitting a form to the treasury. Not that that's easy to reliably enforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is also a cupcake ATM: [http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake- atm](http://www.sprinkles.com/cupcake-atm)

<comment><USER23> When I was a kid we called those 'vending machines'.

<comment><USER24> Not if it reacts to spot market prices.

I'm sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like the idea, but feel like I'd get robbed on the way home.

<comment><USER26> That could happen with any ATM.

<comment><USER27> If someone buys gold from this machine, potential thieves can guarantee that they'll be carrying at least $255, which is way more than most people take from ATMs.

<comment><USER28> People go through a lot of cash in NYC. Most people I know pull $200 at a time, which is pretty close to that.

<comment><USER9> I actually don't understand people who regularly use atms.

If you have access to a bank account then it's not too difficult to get a credit card and in terms of security a CC is much easier to control than a bunch of little pieces of paper.

If the plastic gets stolen or lost you can just cancel it and lose nothing except time (and waiting for a new card to arrive) while with cash you lose it or it gets stolen -- it's gone.

Just to be clear - a credit card should only be used as a debit card, using it like free money is only lying to yourself.

<comment><USER28> The reason I specified NYC is that it (along with other large cities) contains a number of small businesses that don't take credit cards. Your suggestions sounds good in practice, but there are a number of services I would lose or have to travel significantly farther for were I to refuse to carry cash. Cash is also the easiest way to split checks (most restaurants won't split checks more than N ways, for some N <= 3) and I frequently eat out in large groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Problem is as soon as you buy it you lose money. The reason being that if you want to sell it back you must go to a dealer he will low ball you and you will have a hard time getting the actual value of the gold. It is not like $100 bill that you could just spend on whatever you want, you are stuck with something that in order to cash out you must take a cut by selling it to a dealer.

<comment><USER30> How is that different than any asset, stock, bond, Bitcoin? The broker always gets a cut.

<comment><USER13> Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees and friction involved buying and selling compared to other assets.

Stocks: $5 flat fee per trade is typical, index funds charge as low as 0.05% / year.

Bonds: Cheap bond index funds charge 0.1% to 0.3% / year. Buying bonds directly from the treasury carries no fees.

Bitcoin: 0.20-1% fee is typical when purchased online

The only common asset class that is worse in this regard would be real estate, but unlike precious metals, real estate can at least produce income or provide utility while it is held.

<comment><USER30> "Physical precious metals have some of the worst spreads/fees"

Here is a site that buys 1 ounce gold bars for $10 below the current spot price and sells them for 30 above. that is 0.8% spread on the side a slightly over 2% on the buy side.

[http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts](http://www.goldeneaglecoin.com/topProducts)

Are there bad vendors out there, sure, but they are in every market. Look at Bitcon ATM's some of those charge fees amounting to 10%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In Bergamo's low-cost-airlines airport (Milan) there has been one of this for many years. I have never seen anyone using it though.

</comment><comment><USER32> Someone in the comments: "what if someone files a chargeback on the card?". Any thoughts on this? By using the machine you've moved from a reversible transaction to an ireversible transaction. It looks ripe for scammers to abuse.

At least at a counter they'd have your face on cam, but with this they don't.

<comment><USER33> I doubt you could easily initiate a chargeback because: they only accept debit cards, it's a card-present transaction, and presumably the buyer has to enter their PIN.

For the sake of the argument, you can still initiate a chargeback even if you don't claim unauthorized use of your card: e.g. you did make a purchase but the merchant didn't deliver the product, or the product was defective and the merchant refused to give you a refund, etc. But I don't think you'll have much luck trying to claim that a bona-fide financial institution gave you something that's not gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's been one at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi for a while now...I have seen people using it.

</comment><comment><USER35> ATM is a bit of a misnomer isn't it? Can you deposit gold into your "account" at the machine? If not then it's similar to any other sales kiosk (like the ones at the airport selling headphones)

<comment><USER36> Most ATMs won't let you deposit anyway.

<comment><USER37> Any ATM attached to a bank does let you deposit, actually. In the states, mostly just in envelopes that are counted later, but in China, they actually count and verify the money in place.

<comment><USER38> I would imagine that there are more ATMs unattached to banks than attached, so saying "most" ATMs don't take deposits doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

As for deposits, modern ATMs in the US will count bills and also scan and deposit checks immediately without envelopes.

<comment><USER37> TIL! I haven't banked in the states in about 9 years, so I'm horribly out of touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This has been done before in several places before from Dubai to China [http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm- dubai/](http://whenonearth.net/withdraw-gold-atm-dubai/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I've seen these machines in casinos where the vig is ridiculous, like 15-20%. This one seems reasonable at 5%.

</comment><comment><USER41> IIRC there is also one in the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.

</comment><comment><USER42> That guy sure has an awesome job!</comment>


Apple's Third Co-Founder Has Never Used an iPhone and Has No Regrets - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywgbw5/apple-third-founder-ronald-wayne-interview <comment><USER2> The things we say to ourselves to be able to live with ourselves...</comment>


Show HN: Political Proposal for Hungary - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PisNP/Love-is-Love/projects <comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that GitHub and Microsoft is messing with the Minds of developers.

Please see: [https://github.com/PisNP/Love-is- Love/projects/1](https://github.com/PisNP/Love-is-Love/projects/1) and [https://github.com/PisNP/Love-is- Love/projects/2](https://github.com/PisNP/Love-is-Love/projects/2)

Based on timings of project creation. It should have the other permutation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nm this is probably about the tab orders in my browser. Have a nice day :-)</comment></comment>


VMware's new cloud service will run on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/13/vmware-cloud-on-aws/ <comment><USER2> I've heard "we tried to move our app to AWS but we couldn't tolerate instance failure so we moved back to on-prem" so many times in the past.

I'm afraid managers are going to see this as an easy way to jump to the cloud and lift and drop their on-prem apps to AWS without re-architecting to handle failures and expect high uptime.

<comment><USER3> Clueless engineers. The AWS instances don't fail more often or any differently than old school servers.

Source: I've got hundreds

<comment><USER4> >Clueless engineers. The AWS instances don't fail more often or any differently than old school servers.

Instance and host reliability aren't the issue here. The issue is that a disgustingly high number of enterprises rely on vSphere High Availability and Fault-Tolerance features to restart VMs or keep them alive when an OS hangs or the host fails, instead of architecting for high availability at the app layer.

To be entirely fair though, vSphere HA and FT are incredibly friendly to the bottom line relative to rebuilding apps that simply weren't designed for HA.

<comment><USER3> My bad. I didn't get that you were talking about the built-in vSphere HA. This thing is truly amazing =)

I thought it was the usual complain about AWS instances dying and needing to be replaced on regular basis. That thing is a myth. An instances can run for years without any issues, if noone stops it manually.

<comment><USER5> > An instances can run for years without any issues, if noone stops it > manually.

Sometimes.

And sometimes the hardware it was running on dies or there was a maintenance event. Now you have a message like this waiting for you:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34259924/instance- retirem...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34259924/instance-retirement- instance-stop)

Fail to notice? Bye bye instance.

That said, you're right, it's not any more common than hardware failure. But that's common enough. Keep a backup and don't expect your stuff to always be there no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are other advantages to this beyond an alternative deployment method: Many vendor-supplied application stacks only support ESX. Yes, it is possible with some hacking, to get them on to EC2, but at the expense of losing vendor support.

Furthermore, with this comes vMotion. EC2 has yet to implement live migration.

</comment><comment><USER7> If I understand it right, this gives companies ability to shift their services to and from AWS relatively painlessly. Do other cloud provides offer anything comparable?

<comment><USER8> Anyone who uses OpenStack, or Joyents Smart solution, Or Redhats cloud solution, or any number of other open source cloud platforms have this ability.

<comment><USER9> Those are all absolutely valid options, none of those "have this ability".

Nothing in the open source world currently matches NSX's ability to extend the network from on-prem to the cloud. I really wish they did, but it's not even a discussion.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding what feature you are talking about. Al of the solutions mentioned are ones you can run on your own hardware, as well as their respective 'cloud' services, using the same APIs. Are you wanting some sort of live migration of vms between the two?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is huge for a long list of middle market companies who shudder at the prospect of moving a data center from their on premise closet to a hosted solution while leveraging the same exact vSphere infrastructure they already have sunk time and money into.

<comment><USER11> I have always been impressed with the amount of lock-in some companies have gotten themselves into with VMWare. Every place I've worked at which used VMWare, their tooling had a stranglehold on the entire business, with the exception of some totally greenfield stuff done on GCE or AWS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Waiting to see the price list. AWS + VmWare is gonna break the sky.

<comment><USER12> You're not familiar with the operational costs of most Fortune 100 data centers (and more importantly, basic services built on top of a reliable infrastructure) if this sounds eye-watering expensive. Almost everyone I've ever moved to AWS is pretty bad at O&S and pays at least double the monthly costs of AWS for far worse systemic reliability. Add in AWS support being far, far better by every metric than whatever crappy offshore helplessdesk was contracted and it's a no-brainer. Delta's recent debacle just wouldn't have happened, for starters, and that's costing them more than a billion dollars in raw costs.

<comment><USER3> I am familiar enough with that. Traditional datacenters are a money sink and anything will do cheaper, more reliable and easier to manage.

But why AWS + VmWare? That makes no sense.

If you want to have special snowflakes, you go for SoftLayer + VmWare. You can be as exotic as you want with that.

Otherwise, just use AWS. And you get the benefit of all the services that VMWare don't and can't provide. (servers, storage, load balancer, databases...).

Better, go for GCE. It's the same as AWS for 20-50% cheaper. :D

AWS + VmWare is the worst of any world. It's not even a real solution. It's an experimental idea waiting to be released and go though years of bugfix/improvements.

<comment><USER4> >But why AWS + VmWare? That makes no sense.

If you're my customers? AWS + VMware makes plenty of sense because you have gazillions of dollars sunk into vSphere management and automation that's narrowly tailored to the enterprise's needs. Making the case that all of that prior work should be abandoned or phased out in favor of going all-in on AWS is a difficult up-hill battle in these situations.

>AWS + VmWare is the worst of any world. It's not even a real solution. It's an experimental idea waiting to be released and go though years of bugfix/improvements.

This isn't even a real argument. The same could be said of any new product anywhere.

<comment><USER3> The case is to go AWS or stay where you are.

If a company has a HUGE VmWare legacy, we'd both make the case to stay on VmWare.

> This isn't even a real argument. The same could be said of any new product > anywhere.

VmWare and AWS are both hugely complex (possibly among the most complex software on the planet).

They have a different philosophy and they were never intended to fit together. The route to doing so will be filled with endless complications.

We'll see how they execute. IMO they can't overcome their legacy easily, the result will be a mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Vendor lock in is reaching critical mass.

</comment><comment><USER14> Am I wrong or is this VMware effectively throwing in the towel in their quest to compete with Amazon/The Cloud in general?

<comment><USER15> I think this is just embracing and extending. VMWare has the on premise infrastructure market cornered for the most part. But if they don't leverage that and pivot into using off premise stuff, then they stand to lose ground to Azure, as you can orchestrate just about all of Azure from Active Directory/Powershell.

This is a good move on their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if it'll integrate with other AWS services, such as ALBs and ASGs, I don't think VMware has any equivalent.</comment>


Understanding Leadership's Role in Shaping the Remote Work Experience (Webinar) - <AUTHOR> https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3x3RJglvTgi2WZRr9KgZGQ <comment><USER2> Recently we were hosting Remote-first Online Conference and some speakers like Kaylie Boogaerts (People & Culture Manager at LaterPay) and Iwo Szapar (CEO of Remote-how) were covering similar topics.

It'll be great to join your discussion and find more about remote culture and distributed teams.</comment>